Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy

Stop making myself silly

I currently work at an electronics manufacturing company. In the past. I had been good at communicating with others, so work was easy and I got along with colleagues well. However, I no longer feel the same way in the past few years.

In 2008, my company had to downsize several departments, due to the global financial crisis. As a result, the remaining colleagues had to take on more workload than before. However after these years’ changes, there are still some colleagues who can’t adjust themselves. They think that doing more work would lead to making more mistakes, and tend to say "no" to new tasks that are outside their normal working protocols. Afterwards, no one wants to communicate with them.

At the end of last year, some customers requested early delivery of goods prior to the Chinese New Year. In order to meet the customers’ request, every department must cooperate with one another to deliver the goods ahead of the normal schedule. Therefore, the sales department which I was in charge of had to negotiate with other departments every day, such as manufacturing and purchase departments. However, the raw material purchase department always said ""we can’t do it"" and refused to tell us how they were going to do. At that point, the discussion ended up in the dead lock. And, we had no choice but to dismiss the meeting unhappily and leave things unsolved.

One day at a meeting, the same situation happened again. I was quite angry at their attitude, especially the economy was difficult, and many people had to take unpaid leave involuntarily. They should be thankful about having their position. How could they think it’s none of their business when we were trying to maximize the profits for the company? Suddenly, I thought of my Shifu. He always reminds us that "anger would make one silly". I realized that I shouldn’t be influenced by anger. If I was filled with anger, the wisdom which helps me solve problems will disappear. And then I would not only dumb myself down, but it would also take up more time to handle the aftermaths caused by my anger.

Thus, I came back to the meeting. After taking some smooth and slow breaths to calm myself down, I communicated with the purchase department again. This time, I found out the reason they were unwilling to cooperate and I collected some statistics they needed. Also, I used the techniques taught by Sifu, which is to use kind words and humility towards others. And then, I called the suppliers emergently, asking them to contact some workers to come back to work. Finally, the problem was solved. During the communication with the suppliers, I talked with them calmly, patiently and politely, which I learned in Tai Ji Men.

Shifu always teaches us his wisdom by stories or simple words. In the past, I thought those were only good stories or words that showed Shifu cares for us. After this experience with my colleagues, I could now fully understand that Shifu truly cared about dizi. Moreover, this experience alerted my behavior and taught me that I should always carry out the wisdom which Shifu taught me, so that I could have a more satisfactory life.